logo Ming the Mechanic
An old rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up.

This is my dynamic, frequently updated homepage. This is a NewsLog, also known as a WebLog or Blog.

Everything is evolving, so don't assume too much.

People to watch:
Adina Levin
Andrius Kulikauskas
Britt Blaser
Catherine Austin Fitts
Chris Corrigan
Clay Shirky
Dan Gillmor
Dave Pollard
David Allen
David Weinberger
Dewayne Mikkelson
Dina Mehta
Doc Searls
Elisabet Sahtouris
Elizabeth Lawley
Euan Semple
Florian Brody
Frank Patrick
Gen Kenai
George Dafermos
George Por
Graham Hancock
Greg Elin
Hazel Henderson
Heiner Benking
Inspector Lohman
Jean Houston
Jerry Michalski
Jim McGee
Jim Moore
John Abbe
John Perry Barlow
John Robb
Joi Ito
Jon Husband
Jon Lebkowsky
Jon Udell
Jonathan Peterson
Judith Meskill
Julian Elvé
Julie Solheim
Kevin Marks
Lawrence Lessig
Leif Smith
Letecia Layson
Lilia Efimova
Lisa Rein
Marc Canter
Mark Oeltjenbruns
Mark Pilgrim
Mark Woods
Martin Dugage
Martin Roell
Mary Forest
Matt Mower
Max Sandor
Michael Fagan
Mike Owens
Mikel Maron
Mitch Kapor
Mitch Ratcliffe
Nathalie dArbeloff
Netron
Noam Chomsky
Paul Hughes
Peter Kaminski
Phil Wolff
Philippe Beaudoin
Ray Ozzie
Raymond Powers
Rebecca Blood
Roger Eaton
Roland Tanglao
Ross Mayfield
Scott Lemon
Sebastian Fiedler
Sebastien Paquet
Skip Lancaster
Spike Hall
Steven Johnson
Stuart Henshall
Thomas Burg
Thomas Madsen-Mygdal
Thomas Nicholls
Timothy Wilken
Todd Suomela
Tom Atlee
Tom Munnecke
Tom Tomorrow
Ton Zijlstra
Lionel Bruel
Loic Le Meur
Nancy White
Mark Frazier
Merlin Silk
Robert Paterson
Colby Stuart
Nova Spivack
Dan Brickley
Ariane Kiss
Vanessa Miemis
Bernd Nurnberger

Sites to watch:
Action without borders
BoingBoing
Co-intelligence Institute
Disclosure Project
Disinfopedia
Disinformation
Edge
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Explorers Foundation
Forbidden Science
Free Expression Network
Friendly Favors
FutureHi
Global Ideas Bank
Greater Democracy
HeadMap
Imaginify
Independent Media
Manufacturing Dissent
MetaFilter
Nanodot
Smart Mobs
ThoughtsOnThinking
WorldChanging
YES Magazine
Absara
Collective Intelligence
Collective Web
Do No Harm
Emergent by Design
Escape Velocity
Junto
NotThisBody
Openworld
Rhizome
Space Collective
Webcamorama

French:
Emmanuelle
Manur
Elanceur
Loeil de Mouche
IokanaaN
Blog d'Or
Le Petit Calepin
GeeBlog
Absara
Guillaume Beuvelot
Ming Chau
Serge Levan
Jean Michel Billaut
C'est pas Mécanique

IRC: #FrenchChat

A Quote I like:


I live in Toulouse, France where the time now is:
01:04

Click for Toulouse, France Forecast

Other sites around 43.592N 1.4119W


Contacting Me
I get many hundreds of e-mail messages per day and my inbox is becoming increasingly useless to me. So, if you write to me, don't count on an answer unless we know each other really well, or your communication is short and clear. Oh, I'm very friendly and approachable, but I don't have hours enough in my day to read everything.
ffunch -at- worldtrans.org

FOAF icon

If you want your own
NewsLog like this,
or you want a
profile for
leaving comments,
join the
New Civilization
Network


Unique Readers:
graph

Recent Visitors came from:
gravatar.com
www.theknot.com
genericviagranpz.com
viagraprofessionalnvz.com
www.google.com
order-simvastatin.over-blog.
osrosuvastatin5mg.aircus.com
nofaxpaydaynpz.com
hdstreams.ru
streamsport.org

Primarily
Public Domain


Everything I've written here is dedicated to the
Public Domain.
Public Domain Dedication

The quotes from other people's writings, and the pictures used might or might not be copyrighted, but are considered fair use. Thus, overall, this weblog could best be described as being:
Primarily Public Domain.

Syndication:

RSS icon [Valid RSS]

 Never give up
One of the ways I evaluate whether I'm doing the *right* thing, or whether I think others are, is to check whether it is the kind of thing that one will never give up on. That's maybe a little hard to explain, but if one is following a path of purpose through one's life, it isn't a matter of trying this and that, starting things and failing, trying to guess what one should do, etc. Oh, one's activities might include all of those things, and it is quite noble to dare to take risks, to explore untried avenues, and to fail and keep going. But underneath it all there's something that won't fail. If you're doing what you're here to do, there is no failure. There is no way you can fail.
[ | 2002-01-22 01:27 | 5 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 News Log Owners: Categorization
Attention, you other News Log Owners/Editors/Authors, notice that when you enter a new article, you can also optionally put it in a supplemental category in addition to the categories in your own news log. The additional categories are the categories that appear as special interests in the Subjects section. So, if you use those categories, when appropriate, your articles will also appear in the corresponding Subjects section. It will also appear in the News Log that you see in the Resources section, which is a combination of anything that has categories for the Subjects sections. Makes sense?
[ | 2002-01-20 18:25 | 6 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 The Myth of Public Information
pictureThere is a widespread myth underlying most media information, most analysis of the activities of governments and corporations, and most scientific debunking of anything unusual going on in the world. That is that most things are known by the public, and if anything unusual would be going on, we'd know about it. In other words, there are no conspiracies, no big things going on in secret, nothing much happening that isn't described in the official school textbooks and in the newspaper. The myth reasons that if any large number of people are expected to keep a secret, there will always be somebody who spills the beans. The problem is that this isn't true at all.
[ | 2002-01-17 19:43 | 14 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 The Man Who Bought the Internet
I hate monopolies. I have a lot of not very nice things to say about companies or governments that try to own and control the Internet, for example. Now, one of the companies that have been most successful in that regard is not Microsoft, but Verisign. I've never liked that company, but have found it hard to avoid as they methodically would buy up any competition. I was using Thawte for secure digital certificates, as they were the only competitor to Verisign, and much cheaper, but Verisign bought the company, and raised the prices instantly. I was using CyberCash for online credit card processing, but Verisign bought them. Verisign bought Network Solutions, who used to be the domain name monopoly, and their service dropped to even lower levels than before. I believe I've finally gotten all my domains trasferred elsewhere. Anyway, here is an article from business2.com about Stratton Sclavos who runs and owns most of Verisign.
[ | 2002-01-16 21:50 | 8 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 The Tyranny of Law
On the road to creating a better civilization where we can experience unity and diversity, freedom and cooperation, where the world works for all of us - there are some key concepts that I think need to be re-framed and re-thought. One of them is the idea that a government, consisting of a few "representatives" of the people, is allowed to produce huge volumes of *law* that will regulate how people behave, and that somehow that is a good thing, a corner stone of civilization itself.
[ | 2002-01-16 17:16 | 7 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 Dialogue
pictureI always come back to *dialogue* as a central ingredient in creating a new civilization. That is, a space of mutual exploration where we can talk about what we're experiencing, without any need to judge each other. I particularly support dialogue as David Bohm described it. Several people have compiled excellent resources on dialogue. See Tony Judge's page at UIA and Heiner Benking's Open Forum page. And the people who introduced me to dialogue: Linda and Glenna at The Dialogue Group. Also, check out Deep Dialogue.
[ | 2002-01-14 02:10 | 4 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 Post-Modernism
pictureThe term "post-modernism" has always confused me. Or, rather, I must admit that I never got a good definition. Now, researching it some more, the best explanation I can find is in these pages. Modernism was characterized by a belief that rational, orderly progress of one well-identified central metaphor, such as Science or Capitalism or Communism, was going to solve things. Post-modernism is the end of belief in any such absolute truths; replaced with a sense that everything is relative; there are no universal answers or agreements; culture just fragments into a playful celebration of chaos. We're surfing across multiple paradigms, without any of them being the obvious RIGHT one. Mostly it means that Science and your local Political Paradigm have been deposed as gods of your world. You can make up the truth as well as they can.
[ | 2002-01-06 22:18 | 8 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 Information Immersion or Abstraction
Having just spent a couple of weeks in Denmark, I notice how many things one only picks up by being immersed in a place, by being there. I'm usually kind of obsessive about figuring out certain things in advance when I travel somewhere. Like, I don't really go anywhere without being sure I have mobile phone service and a way of connecting up my laptop. In part because I want my customers to keep paying me as if I'm working, even though I'm on vacation. And I usually end up fairly well prepared on that kind of things, but only after time-consuming research. Things that might be quite simple when I'm there can be rather hard to figure out remotely, as one doesn't necessarily know where to start.
[ | 2002-01-06 12:05 | 5 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 Winter Wonderland
pictureI'm having a good time on vacation in Denmark with my family. Although most of us are born here we're not quite used to the cold, though. But it is very nice to see the snow again, and my kids have been busy making snowmen and throwing snowballs.
[ | 2001-12-22 01:14 | 3 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 Leadership
pictureI sometimes get a kick out of the experience of reading things I myself have written a long time ago. I usually can't quite appreciate my own writing, unless I somehow run into it accidentally later on, and I can sort of read it as somebody else might. And sometimes even learn something. Anyway, I was just reading the news that the google search engine now has archived the last 20 years of UseNet postings. Which is bound to include many stupid discussions I've had with people over time, so I went to check. And, indeed, there are things there that I wouldn't particularly want to be known for today, but also good things I might have said. Rather randomly, below is a piece about leadership, which I wrote in an answer to somebody else's question back in 1996.
[ | 2001-12-11 23:38 | 4 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 Seeing Patterns in Data
pictureI'm reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It is sort of a thriller about secret codes and stuff, taking place both in WWII and today. Anyway, one of the recurring themes is about finding patterns in apparent randomness. *Information* is essentially the stuff that is different within a volume of data. If I say AAAAAAAAAAAAAABAAA, there isn't a whole lot of information. It is a bunch of As and a B. The B is what sticks out, of course. There is no information if everything is the same all the time, or if it is just the same repetitive pattern. Information is conveyed when something different takes place, which somebody can make sense out of.

Through intelligent analysis one might find patterns of information where the untrained eye wouldn't expect or notice any. An example from the book: a secret installation that is working on breaking codes, using a certain kind of machines, has hired mainly women who are taller than the norm, because of the way the machines are constructed, as they need to be able to reach to the top of them to change the paper. Somebody who had access to personnel records and were analyzing them might notice the height variance. That is information. It points to a deeper pattern. A smart intelligence person would notice that variation and would investigate it further to find out what it meant.
[ | 2001-12-11 04:27 | 6 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 Is it sharable?
Most things I seem to care about are sharable. There's a certain enjoyment in sharing. Sharing an experience, a story, something one has learned, a piece of good information, a better way of doing things, a spiritual revelation, sexual ecstasy, whatever it may be. Nothing is quite so much fun if it can't be shared. Even if it is a deeply personal experience. Then maybe you'll share your subsequently different outlook on life, or you'll go around emanating a different vibe.

I'd also go as far as saying that in most fields it is good that something is sharable, and bad when something isn't sharable. In fields such as technology, communication, information, politics, art, or just about anything else I can think of - if something useful and desirable is sharable, it can benefit many people, and possibly the world. If something considered useful and desirable is not sharable, but is only available for the select few, under very limited circumstances, it is probably a waste of resources and the world is bereft of a potential positive benefit.
[ | 2001-12-07 23:46 | 10 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 Seeking the blueprints of a global brain
What I am looking for is a better global brain - a better way for us to be connected together, where our collective intelligence will tend to emerge.

I'm looking for a structure of inter-connectedness where more connections add up to more intelligence, rather than more confusion. It would become better when more people participate. Increased diversity would increase the rate of evolution, and make the whole system more intelligent and more stable.
[ | 2001-12-06 22:30 | 14 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 E-mail is 30 years old
Seems like e-mail has existed for 30 years. I was just enjoying an article at NY Times (sorry, they require a one-time registration). And, well, I haven't had e-mail for quite that long - only for around 19 years, but I still felt a certain nostalgia about it. The first time I had a computer that was *connected* was in 1982 and it was an ancient Z80 computer with 16k of memory, connected with a 75/1200 modem to the experimental Danish Teletext service. The year later I had an IBM PC, with a 300bps modem, and a subscription to The Source. Even connecting with that was rather cumbersome, and cost me around $40 per hour at the time. And at first I didn't really know anybody else who had e-mail, so I can't say I used that part much for a while. It was a couple of years after that that e-mail started replacing faxes as my way of staying in touch with friends around the world.
[ | 2001-12-06 16:43 | 6 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 Links in your news log
For those of you who have your own news log here, I'm adding some possibly more convenient way of doing links. As it has you been, a URL you typed in would become highlighted and clickable. But some URLs are ugly, and you would probably rather want to have a piece of descriptive text be clickable. You could do that if you know HTML, but here is a slightly more user-friendly way. Let's say I want to link to the URL [link] and I want it to have the text "Common Dreams" be what is clickable. I can type it in this special way: Common Dreams and it will show up like this: Common Dreams I.e. it is a clickable link, with a readable text, and it will also open up in a new window, so one doesn't lose one's place in your news log.
[ | 2001-12-02 16:30 | 6 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 Free Democracy
I'm having a conversation with Mark Smollin about principles and systems for a better democracy. Experimentally, there are postings in the bulletin board under the "Social System Design" subject in the Subjects pages. We met in the Conscious Evolution Gateway educational program that Barbara Marx-Hubbard is running. Anyway, creating a better and more direct democracy has always been something I'd like to do. With the Internet connecting most of us, it ought to be possible to come up with systems for connecting us together in such a way that our collective will can be better facilitated. Seems like the old Industrial Age methods for "governing" society need to go.
[ | 2001-12-01 06:00 | 3 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 E-mail is Dead
It has been several years since e-mail stopped being a useful medium for me. Now it is mostly an ongoing source of guilt for me, because of all the needles I don't notice in the loads of hay stacks I get every day. I still get 5-600 e-mail messages per day. Amongst them, I'm sure, many gold nuggets of information, as well as important personal messages I really should be attending to. But in the mass of everything else, and by the sheer volume of it, it is a matter of complete luck whether I happen to notice some of the stuff I ought to notice. What isn't working for me is the linear, unstructured nature of e-mail.
[ | 2001-11-26 05:22 | 19 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 Happyface Spiders
pictureThat's actually a real spider. Of the family Theridion grallator, commonly known as the "Hawaian Happyface Spiders". They're very small, were first discovered in 1973, and only seem to be found on Hawaii. See more pictures:
[link]
[ | 2001-11-20 04:44 | 4 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 What are Weblogs
Here's some stuff about the phenomenon of weblogs:
[link]

You know, News Logs are pretty much the same thing as weblogs or blogs. They're called different things in different incarnations.

As he says, they're Personal Web Publishing Communities. He also says that this is relational writing. Almost everything relates to something else, somewhere else. This is a different kind of writing that hasn't really existed before.
[ | 2001-11-18 04:02 | 1 comment | PermaLink ]  More >

 The Internet as an archaeological resource
pictureSince I'm going back home to Denmark for christmas with my family, after not having been there for many years, I got the idea of looking on the Internet for people I used to know in Denmark, just to see what came up and what has become of people. Like, my childhood friends, people I went to school with, etc. And it is sort of a weird experience. Some people are easily found and turn out to be doctors or engineers or business consultants or musicians. Some of them I can find, but only in a more obscure context. Like, one was looking for parts for restoring an antique car at some point, another posted a comment about a movie, and another posted a recipe for sausage stew.
[ | 2001-11-17 17:57 | 6 comments | PermaLink ]  More >



<< Newer stories  Page: 1 ... 93 94 95 96 97   Older stories >>
yin yang hat

This is a collage of things that catch my eye, things that need to be said, and stuff I really care about


TRUTH
BEAUTY
FREEDOM
LOVE
TECHNOLOGY



Barthas castle. Halloween party for Americans in Toulouse.

Previous stories
2009-11-01
  • Seven questions that keep physicists up at night

  • 2009-10-29
  • Convergent or Divergent

  • 2009-10-28
  • Then a miracle occurs

  • 2009-10-27
  • Compassion Exercise

  • 2009-10-26
  • The power of appreciation

  • 2009-10-25
  • Opinions, perceptions and intuition

  • 2009-10-16
  • Magic reality

  • 2009-10-15
  • Abstraction

  • 2009-10-14
  • Feeling the world

  • 2009-07-27
  • Reboot 11 / The Art of Not-Doing

  • 2009-06-16
  • Baseline technology

  • 2009-06-15
  • Immaculate Telegraphy

  • 2009-06-11
  • Blogging/Microbloggi.. and work

  • 2009-06-07
  • The Giant in Nantes

  • 2009-06-05
  • Writing

  • 2008-10-14
  • Where are the podcars?
  • Money and the Crisis of Civilization

  • 2008-07-11
  • Freedom and Complexity

  • 2008-07-06
  • Laws of social networks

  • 2008-07-05
  • Self-Organized Criticality

  • 2008-06-29
  • Complicated and Complex

  • 2008-06-20
  • Peer material production

  • 2008-05-16
  • The Universe as God

  • 2008-05-14
  • Kriss Hammond wants to change my financial status

  • 2008-05-08
  • Why Denmark is the world's happiest country

  • 2008-05-07
  • Why Pigs Don’t Have Wings

  • 2008-05-06
  • Why can't we stick to our goals?

  • 2008-02-27
  • Secrets of the park

  • 2008-02-24
  • My Dad

  • 2008-02-23
  • Web 1, 2, 3 and 4

  • 2008-02-22
  • Blogging or Logging
  • God talks about Richard Dawkins
  • Illusion

  • 2008-02-21
  • Open social networks
  • A Samurai’s Creed

  • 2008-02-20
  • The universe as a virtual reality
  • Experiencing

  • 2008-01-11
  • Richard Dawkins comes to call

  • 2008-01-09
  • A Communication Model

  • 2007-12-26
  • LeWeb3

  • More ..

    Categories
  • Articles (8)
  • Culture (197)
  • Diary (298)
  • Dreams (7)
  • Energy (7)
  • History (26)
  • Information (179)
  • Inspiration (172)
  • Knowledge (130)
  • Nature (25)
  • NCN (22)
  • News (79)
  • Opinions (15)
  • Organization (159)
  • Patterns (118)
  • Politics (171)
  • Processing (6)
  • Programming (50)
  • Projects (18)
  • Science (73)
  • Stories (9)
  • Technology (116)
  • Thoughts (52)


  • Recent Comments:
    2017-04-08
  • معلوماتي: dad

  • 2017-04-01
  • rocko hunter: sdfghj

  • 2017-03-23
  • dinesh: Results and bahubali collections.

  • 2017-03-22
  • word cookies game: word cookies game

  • 2017-03-17
  • SHAIK SARKAR ALI: Peyton List

  • 2017-03-08
  • Dr. Philip Leonard: thnku for this ost

  • 2017-03-03
  • QWERTYUI: QAWERTYUI

  • 2017-02-19
  • Oscars 2017: Oscars 2017 Live

  • 2017-02-18
  • Oscar Winners: 2017 oscar winners

  • 2017-02-16
  • IPL 2017: IPL 2017
  • conference alerts: conference alerts

  • 2017-02-12
  • Obat Pelangsing: obat pelangsing
  • Obat Hammer Of Thor: Obat Hammer Of Thor
  • alat sex semarang: alat sex semarang

  • 2017-02-07
  • Arvind: Very Nice

  • More ..


    Recent Weeks
    13: 3/25-3/31
    12: 3/18-3/24
    11: 3/11-3/17
    10: 3/4-3/10
    09: 2/26-3/3
    08: 2/19-2/25
    07: 2/12-2/18
    06: 2/5-2/11
    05: 1/29-2/4
    04: 1/22-1/28
    03: 1/15-1/21
    02: 1/8-1/14
    01: 1/1-1/7
    52: 12/18-12/24
    51: 12/11-12/17
    50: 12/4-12/10

    MonTueWedThuFriSatSun
    1 2 3
    4 5 6 7 8 9 10
    11 12 13 14 15 16 17
    18 19 20 21 22 23 24
    25 26 27 28 29 30 31

    Search for:

    [Advanced Search]
    [All Articles]


    worldtrans logo

    holoworld logo

    tp logo


    ncn logo



    logo

    This site created with
    OrgSpace NewsLog

    version 1.87